


Wildflower

by VictoriaBlaze



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Character Death, Intimacy, Loss, Natural Disasters, Threats of Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-31
Updated: 2020-07-31
Packaged: 2021-03-06 00:41:41
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,070
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25624579
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/VictoriaBlaze/pseuds/VictoriaBlaze
Summary: London, 1703. The morning of the Great Storm. Two angels, having spent a night devoted to their immense love of one another, now face the coming tempest alone.This is Imamiah's final story, taking place in London at the start of the Great Storm of 1703.Content Warning: Threats of violence, character death, intimacy, natural disaster aftermath, and loss
Kudos: 2





	Wildflower

A half hour remained before the cyclone would touch down and carve a brutal gash through Central and Southern England. Relentless, merciless rain pounded the streets of London while the impish wind whipped across the city’s rooftops, tugging at loose tiles and hanging on crumbling chimneys. Fearful bodies huddled in their homes, whispering of God’s terrible judgement falling upon them as in days of yore. The world was a merciless cacophony of zephyr shrieks and drumming thunder, and through the black, sheeting horror, an angel clad in greys skipped and twirled through the roadways.

Imamiah laughed and hummed, oblivious of the bitter elements as he tapped each house he passed, granting miracle after miracle for entire city blocks. His whole being focused on a single feeling - a lingering, pleasant warmth where Aziraphale had kissed the crown of his head before saying goodbye. _Consequences be damned,_ he decided as he placed another protective ward on a near-crumbling domicile. If his head was on the block, he may as well spit in the face of his executioners before they swung the axe. 

Hopping playfully up onto a lamppost, the angel hung on tightly and swung around it, igniting the wick behind the glass plating in a bright, dazzling flame. The two principalities shared hours of pure, staggering, beautiful love throughout the night. After abandoning his possessions and returning to Aziraphale’s arms, the angels refused to break their connection again as they lounged together by the fire, wrapped up in each other and enjoying a fine spread of delightful foodstuffs and tea. Imamiah’s smile stretched even wider as he jumped from the lamppost, remembering the look in Aziraphale’s eyes as the older angel slid a dainty spoonful of honey into Imamiah’s mouth. That taste still lingered with him like a dogged melody as he spun in the middle of the thoroughfare.

With childlike wonder, Imamiah stopped and threw his head back with his arms extended, opening his mouth to taste the driving rain. Through all of the storms he’d caused over centuries and centuries, the angel suddenly realized he never knew what rain tasted like. Laughing, he brought his bare hands up and pushed strands of sopping-wet hair from his face, his fingers gently brushing the vibrant cornflower bloom tucked firmly behind his ear. Imamiah beamed.

In their remaining hour, when the fire was reduced to embers and the keening storm became a haunting, enveloping symphony, they decided to test the boundaries of their abilities when Joined. Clearing away their teacups and half-eaten delights, the two angels sat opposite one another on the aged wooden floor, their palms pressed gently together. Closing their eyes, they focused on the Love they shared and imagined the calm, golden ocean of divinity that flowed easily between their two beings. Lacing their fingers together, they concentrated as they both envisioned the sea growing more energized. Waves picked up and swelled. The water rose past their chests, churning and roiling as raw, intense love boiled up from unseen fathoms below the surface. Their consciousnesses broke as unbridled rapture pulled them under the pitching waves, dragging them down into deep, uncharted expanses.

They woke a brief time later, dizzy and shaking, to find themselves wound tightly together, cradled in one another’s wings. Hesitant and confused, they loosened their grips just enough to sit up in the hazy darkness. Aziraphale made a blowing motion at one of the nubs of a candle on the edge of his work desk and it flickered cheerily to life, unveiling the new interior of his apartment with its friendly glow. Every conceivable surface of the walls, floorboards, and ceiling was blooming with lush greenery. Fresh clover and moss carpeted the wooden slats beneath them. Ivy spun like galaxies in the rafters above and spiraled whimsically down the walls. Cherubic wildflowers swirled like playful notes in a happy song around furniture legs and between the stacks of books. Aziraphale laughed in delight and surprise as he picked a plump cornflower blossom and affixed it in Imamiah’s hair by his ear. The angel admired his addition with delirious contentment.

“I do believe blue is your colour, my dear.”

Grinning and sighing, Imamiah waltzed up to an apothecary on the corner and placed his hands on the door, shoring up the structure with another freely-given, unsanctioned miracle. A blistering sizzle of lightning cracked behind him like a whip, nearly freezing over his veins. Lingering just long enough to finish his task, he shook his tingling hands out and turned around to face the three Archangels now standing in the middle of the avenue. Sweeping his arms wide in a welcoming gesture, the principality graced them with a broad, sly smirk.

“Gentlemen,” he greeted, echoed by a distant rumble of thunder. Uriel and Sandalphon took a half-step back in horror, turning their eyes briefly to Gabriel who stood, unmoved, between them. The broad, imposing Archangel smiled thinly.

“What the fuck do you think you’re doing?” he asked, his tone a muddled split between bemusement and fury.

“Enjoying my last day alive,” the angel honestly replied, quick-stepping down the stairs towards them in a manner that very nearly resembled dancing. The flanking Archangels took another meager step back and manifested their weapons, clearly unnerved.

“You’ve got that part right,” Gabriel boomed over the howling storm. “Coming down early and performing over fifty unauthorized miracles against the storm you’re _supposed to be causing?_ Have you lost your mind?”

“Not my mind, no,” Imamiah laughed, his eyes narrowing. Regaining her authority, Uriel stepped up and thrust her spear into his face threateningly.

“Once again, you have received your Judgement, Angel,” she snarled, furious that this lowly underling put her off her guard. “Guilty, having committed sins against Her Machinations. Anything to say?”

Imamiah’s grin fixed for just a moment and then suddenly he lashed out, taking hold of her spear tip and loosing a gush of supercharged energy into the silver rod. Uriel screamed as her hands flew off her weapon, electric and stricken with pain. The spear snapped with a mighty _pop,_ splintering into thick, jagged needles that made Gabriel and Sandalphon leap away in surprise. Wiping bright-gold blood on the edge of his heather-grey long coat, Imamiah beamed.

“I am not merely an angel, Uriel,” he asserted, squaring his shoulders. “I am a Principality.”

Sandalphon growled and popped his fingers under his gleaming knuckle dusters, but Gabriel stayed him with a hand. An intrigued expression that wasn’t quite a smile stretched across the Archangel’s face. “Whatever you are, you won’t be it for much longer,” he gently threatened. “We don’t want to take you by force, but we will if we have to.”

Imamiah chuckled and the thunder rolled. He stepped up to the authority figure and played him a threatening grin. “Are you certain you’re able?”

A stern crack of lightning ripped the air behind him and he froze. Turning rigidly on the spot, Imamiah straightened up and stood at attention before Michael, a temporary slave to his conditioning. She smiled wanly at him and gave a slight incline of her head, releasing him from the stance. Swearing quietly to himself, he relaxed with flushed cheeks. Noting the principality’s change in demeanour with smug satisfaction, Gabriel stepped past him and took position beside his newly-arrived coworker. Nodding upwards, he rallied Sandalphon and Uriel to square off behind the rogue angel. Michael held her hands studiously behind her back and smiled.

“Imamiah,” she casually greeted him. “Your presence is requested.”

“Presence?” he repeated, knowing full-well the answer.

“Before the Almighty.” Her arctic blue eyes flashed with correlation as she spied the bloom in his hair, and her head tilted ever so slightly to the side yet again. “You found flowers growing in a storm? In London, and in the dead of winter no less?”

The principality swallowed down the knot of bile in his throat. “Certainly a miracle, I agree,” he asserted boldly. 

The flame in her eyes danced higher. “Indeed,” she affirmed, and then gestured towards the space in front of her. “Shall we go?”

Wordlessly, he stepped mechanically up to her, offering his arm. The Archangel took it and in a flash of dazzling light they were Upstairs, standing in the centre of a sanitized, polished, warehouse-style office. Gently, Michael led him to the vast window that looked out across Her Creation. Imamiah regarded it all, his mind lost to curiosity, hope, and fear, and then suddenly it was gone, replaced with a blinding, searing whiteness. The floor dropped out from under him and he spiralled into the light, feeling his corporation tear away from him like smoke on the wind, spooling upwards as he fell. When the last bit left him like the tail end of a balloon string, he felt himself come to rest in blazing, lambent divinity. He could not remember a time when he felt so whole.

“Hello Imamiah,” a woman’s voice vibrated through his being. “You’ve been busy.”

“Almighty…” he breathed, unable to comprehend Her Glory in all of his profound brokenness.

“Let’s just do a quick tally since we have the time,” she drawled. “Creation, your ‘betrayal’ at the Flood, Paradox - lots of Paradox - and some interesting reconditioning à la the Archangels. Then earthquakes, tsunamis, storms aplenty, a few volcanoes, the whole Great Fire thing, and now this cyclone business. I’d say that about covers it.”

She paused, almost as if considering something. “What’s that on you? On your head?” she asked. Nervously, Imamiah lifted his hand to the echo of the cornflower. Somehow, it was still tucked behind his ear, and he sheepishly offered it to his Creator. A sound very near to laughter came from everywhere at once as the blossom dissolved. “Not the flower, the kiss.”

Surprised, he drew his fingers up to his crown. Though he felt nothingness in the remains of where his corporation had been, he pulled his hand back and saw his vitreous fingertips brushed with a shimmering champagne-pink dust. “Aziraphale’s certainly a special one, isn’t he,” She delighted. The angel drew his hand to what was his chest as if he could somehow absorb the remnants of the man’s blessing.

“I love him,” he admitted softly, seeing no reason why he should hide the truth any longer, least of all from God.

“Of course you do,” She sighed like an exhausted, but pleased, parent. “I made you to.”

Imamiah faltered. “W-what? But I am-”

“Actually, you’re not. Since you’re so stubborn to think I, who made everything as it’s meant to be, somehow _made you wrong,_ let me tell you exactly what you are: you are the Prologue.”

“Prologue?” he echoed, confused. “I do not understand.”

“Of course you don’t. You’re not meant to because you won’t be around for the Story.”

The divine brightness seemed to grow harsher as Imamiah took in Her words. “...no, I suppose I cannot be,” he eventually agreed. “That is why I’m here, after all. Paying the price for my sins.”

“Hardly,” She gently scoffed. “Imamiah, you’re here because your time is over. You’ve done everything I made you to do and now I’m calling you Home.”

“...Home…” the principality quietly repeated, staggered by the thought. The atmosphere around his spirit slowly warmed and churned as he felt Her pure, uncompromising love gently pooling into his feet and rising, centimetre by centimetre, up his form. It was an unparalleled felicity. His consciousness began to fizzle and fade as Her love overwhelmed his senses, and then he felt it again. The small warmth on his crown, that gentle reminder of one last thing he had to do.

“Almighty,” he gasped, clasping one hand over the other on his chest, tears of joy at Her Glory streaming down his cheeks. “Please-”

“I will,” She affirmed with a small noise that he almost thought was a chuckle. “Principalities. You are my favourite Hosts, you know. I would say ‘don’t tell the others’, but, well.”

The delicate sensation within Imamiah swelled as Her holy love flooded higher, filling the spaces of him with a deep, soothing healing. Every cut that time and torture sliced into his soul was ameliorated, leaving only the euphoria of love and joy in its wake. Each sense quietly departed, with the last leaving the lingering hint of rich desert clay and the sweet taste of figs on his tongue. And then, very gradually, he began to feel like sand drawn in slow-motion on a tender warm breeze. He could sense the Almighty was smiling.

“Welcome home, Imamiah,” she soothed as he melted into her Light. “ And don’t worry. When I see him, I’ll tell him.”

\--

It was impossible to discern the time of day when Arizaphale emerged onto the ravaged streets of London, assessing the storm’s damage with a hard eye and a mournful heart. Massive chimneys, whole carriages, and entire sections of buildings were strewn across the metropolis like the aftermath of a petulant child having wantonly smashed their toys. Older, less-fortunate structures collapsed entirely, and from them sounds of grief and pain echoed in the pre-dawn haze like songbirds’ calls. While he wandered, the angel mustered what little miracles he could without drawing undue attention, and physically aided where he could not hide his divine interventions. He even stopped to lift a support beam from a man’s leg in the wreckage of his home, completely unaware that his wife lay dead beneath the rubble an arm’s length away from where they struggled.

As Aziraphale worked to alleviate the pains of so many casualties of circumstance, his own pain and uncertainty dulled until it faded into the static buzz of keening lamentations of the city. His feet took him from mercy to mercy, unconsciously weaving a meandering path back home. While he hoped - as Aziraphale always possessed even the smallest sliver of hope in spite of all reason or sense - that everything would be as he had left it, his rational mind knew there was no real chance the tottering, near-derelict bakery would still be standing. It took him the better part of an hour before he rounded the final corner and emerged onto his avenue.

The angel paused as he stood in the street, uncertain of what he was seeing. Blinking rapidly, his expression froze in a flash of shock as he saw the bakery still proudly positioned between its storm-ravaged neighbours, seemingly untouched. A lump caught in his throat and he shook off the paralysis, picking up his feet with uncharacteristic haste. That sliver of hope swelled, piercing his chest as he bolted across the lane and up the stairs to his home.

_Maybe… just maybe he was still…_

Aziraphale threw open the door and snapped his fingers, igniting every candle and lamp in the cramped lodging. Glittering lights sprung up like the sudden birth of a constellation, sending energetic shadows skipping across the stacks of books, baskets of papers, and the verdant garden that love had created in the small hours of the morning. The air caught painfully in his chest as he stepped into the blessed space, marking every footnote to the story of his and Imamiah’s last night together. The half-finished cups of tea, the dainty plate of morsels left untasted, the few feathers loosened from a moment of gentle grooming. Reaching down, his fingertips brushed a quaint patch of cornflower blossoms and he grit his teeth.

An unnatural shadow lingered by the blooms, catching the principality’s eye as he made to stand. Curious, he dipped back down and retrieved a pair of black leather gloves from the clover. Tears sprung up in his eyes as he pressed them to his chest. Turning, he staggered back out onto the landing at the top of his stairs and drew in a long, rattling breath of sharp morning air. Half-seeing through swimming, aching eyes, he marked the lightness of dawn as it started to creep on the horizon. Aziraphale turned to face it and suddenly lurched, grabbing his breast with the glove-holding hand and fiercely gripping the creaking banister with the other.

Pain unlike anything he’d ever experienced wracked his being; it was a sensation like a red-hot blade slipping through his ribcage and carving out a clean slice of his heart. Aziraphale gasped, eyes wide and overspilling. The Principalities had lost one of their own. Now, they were only seven.

Unwilling to fight the grief for another moment, he dropped to his knees at the top of the stairs and wept from the unfathomable loss and outrage. He turned his eyes to the heavens in disbelief, the fury he felt bubbling up only to choke and die in his throat. They did this. Those who were supposed to be Higher Authorities. The pinnacles of Her Justice. And She allowed it. Aziraphale flushed with hot anger as his vicious grip dug into the top stair, splintering the wood with an easy series of _snaps_ and _creaks._ He was a _principality_ \- a being made of Her Love and Compassion, and with the express purpose of sharing the tenets of his creation with humanity. As Imamiah was.

How could he continue to share her Love knowing they had destroyed his brother? How could he show Compassion when the Kingdom of Light was so cruel? How could Heaven hold itself above all when they allowed such torment and suffering in a being so innocent? A being like himself? Beset with anguish and outrage, he pushed himself to his feet, intending to fight his way up to Her Throne if it came to it, when the softening sky abruptly broke into dawn. 

Layers of murky, solemn clouds warmed as sheets of dazzling gold unfurled before the angel. The sky shimmered and danced with an unearthly shine as wave upon wave of auric light sprayed across the morning horizon, bathing all in its halcyon glow. Across his six thousand years of sunrises and sunsets, Aziraphale had never seen such a display, and his heart seized as tears glistened on his cheeks. In the diminishing night behind him, a bird called tenderly to the morning air as a ribbon of white stole across the sky, brighter than any shooting star and gone in an instant. The principality took some meager comfort as he shut his eyes and pressed the gloves to his chest, basking in the gift the dawn had brought him. 

What was ruined would be rebuilt.


End file.
